The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kanji: Venture VCs aim to build scale monopolies despite regulatory resistance
“We as a venture industry have to think about how to create monopolies. Like, the regulator doesn't want monopolies, but we want monopolies. We want companies with increasing returns to scale, with deep defensible moats. You build this thing, it has this huge m…”
Kanji: Venture managers should fundraise for fixed time, not fund size
“Do not do a fundraise for a size of the fund. Do a fundraise for time of the fund. Give yourself 90 days. Whatever you get, go start investing.”
Kanji: VCs Should Sell Post-IPO Stock via a Three-Tranche Formula
“And so I think the formula that we now have is at the time of the IPO, as soon as you're out of lockup, A third of it you sell, a third of it you sell six months later, and then a third of it you sell another six to 12 months after that. Just make it a formula…”
Kanji: Seed investors should sell early if offered a 50x return
“If someone offers you like, 50 X on your first investment, maybe there's actually a reason to take some money off the table. But, you know, normally you would have said, do that, you get your 50 X's at the IPO stage, or at the very late stages, and then the sa…”
Kanji: VC Employees Optimize for Fast Markups Over Real Returns
“If you're the general employee, you optimize for getting to the next career ladder, and how do you show that you can get to the next career ladder? You do a deal, and then General Catalyst, or Index, or Kleiner, or Sequoia, or Andreessen, I mean, there are so …”
Kanji: VCs get no upside arguing with non-portfolio founders
“Yeah, I'm kind of in the same camp. There's no upside from, like, arguing with people. I mean, argue with your founders who are, like, in your, like, they're in your family, right? You're an investor, you're a long, but, like, there's the outside world.”
Kanji: Global app platforms allow European startups to scale without geographic limits
“But once these distribution platforms became global, you know, the playing field completely changed, right? You put your app on top of the app store. It doesn't make a difference where you come from. You're going to get users all over the world. And Angry Bird…”
Kanji: Founders must use social engineering to close seed funding rounds
“The best way to get any kind of round done is do the social engineering that you need to do to make sure other people in the market who are pretty well-regarded are talking you up, because that's the best way to get venture firms super excited.”
Kanji: Winning VC requires contrarian bets validated by consensus within two years
“You kind of have to do things that are a little bit off-piste. You kind of have to build for the big outcome, and you have to be a little bit contrarian, and then very quickly, about a year or two later, you have, the world has to recognize that you're right i…”
Kanji: Preferred stock liquidation preferences matter even in large outcomes
“Like we think that the preference matters even in these large outcomes because there could be volatility downstream.”
Kanji: Seed Funds Cannot Rescue Startups Without Heavy Capital Reserves
“The lesson for us is like, this hard work stuff, you need to be well capitalized to be able to do, and some, sometimes it's not our place. Like, even if we could do the work, we don't have the capital base to be able to do these things.”
Kanji: Fintech startups are unbundling HSBC's website pixel by pixel
“You can basically take the HSBC webpage and start tearing it apart. There's a startup, you know, for every little pixel, right, on the HSBC webpage doing a different service. There's a startup going after them, right? It's a bunch of piranhas attacking, attack…”